ck upon hasty legislation; like some second chambers in
Europe, it is the representative of powers whose preservation in their
dignity is essential to the preservation of the form of our government
itself.

We pursue the same distribution of power and responsibility when we pass
to the States. The federal government is not to interfere in what the
State can do and ought to do for itself; the State is not to meddle with
what the county can best do for itself; nor the county in the affairs
best administered by the town and the municipality. And so we come to the
individual citizen. He cannot delegate his responsibility. The government
even of the smallest community must be, at least is, run by parties and
by party machinery. But if he wants good government, he must pay as
careful attention to the machinery,--call it caucus, primary, convention,
town-meeting,--as he does to the machinery of his own business. If he
hands it over to bosses, who make politics a trade for their own
livelihood, he will find himself in the condition of stockholders of a
bank whose directors are mere dummies, when some day the cashier packs
the assets and goes on a foreign journey for his health. When the citizen
simply does his duty in the place where he stands, the boss will be
eliminated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, and we shall have,
what by courtesy we say we have now, a government by the people. Then all
the way down from the capital to the city ward, we shall have vital
popular government, free action, discussion, agitation, life. What an
anomaly it is, that a free people, reputed shrewd and intelligent, should
intrust their most vital interests, the making of their laws, the laying
of their taxes, the spending of their money, even their education and the
management of their public institutions, into the keeping of political
bosses, whom they would not trust to manage the least of their business
affairs, nor to arbitrate on what is called a trial of speed at an
agricultural fair.

But a good government, the best government, is only an opportunity.
However vast the country may become in wealth and population, it cannot
rise in quality above the average of the majority of its citizens; and
its goodness will be tested in history by its value to the average man,
not by its bigness, not by its power, but by its adaptability to the
people governed, so as to develop the best that is in them. It is
incidental and imperative that the